Advertising on the Internet continues to grow at a rapid pace. As in other advertising mediums, the amount of advertising inventory available in a given period of time is finite. Contracts are created between advertisers and publishers that specify a particular market segment, range of dates for publication of their advertisements, and an advertising goal, translate into a certain quantity of the available inventory. Many of the contracts compete for the same limited inventory of advertising products. Managing the overlap of market segments has been previously discussed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/743,962, the contents of which are herein incorporated by reference for all purposes.
The advertising inventory, sometimes referred to as advertising impressions being viewed on an Internet site, includes premium advertising impressions and remnant advertising impressions. The premium advertising impressions, also referred to as guaranteed impressions, are typically sold for a much higher price per impression than the remnant impressions. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/743,962 deals with the distribution of the premium advertising impressions so as to fulfill contractual obligations among competing segments. However, the distribution and management of the remnant advertising impressions is not addressed. In most instances, the remnant advertising impressions count for a majority of the total advertising impressions provided by a publisher, and the price is not set as with the premium advertising impressions. Thus, any increase in the revenue generated from the remnant advertising impressions is compounded as a result of the overweight nature of the remnant advertising impressions in the total advertising impressions.
It is within this context that the invention arises.